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7 YouTube SEO Tips

7 Tips For Using YouTube SEO To Drive More Traffic To Videos

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. It generates approximately 92 billion page views every month by the time of this writing. Also, it provides traffic to various blogs and websites and every minute about 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. SEO still applies to YouTube, and the following 7 YouTube SEO tips will help you rank your videos better on the platform.

1. Create The Right Type Of Content

If you wish to rank well on both Google and YouTube, it is important to target your content strategically. YouTube users search for content that is informative, entertaining, and helpful. Simply put, YouTube users would like to be entertained, solve problems, or learn new skills. This means that a product advert will typically not fare well on YouTube.

2. Consider The Length Of The Videos You Upload

When ranking the top videos on the users’ feed, YouTube takes some factors such as social media shares, likes, length of time users spend watching, comments, and views into account. While calls-to-action and good marketing campaigns can affect shares, comments, and views, working on the length of your videos has a greater impact. However, ensure that you don’t bore your viewers by having very long videos.

3. Be Careful With The Naming Conventions

Currently, neither Google nor YouTube can tell what the video is about just by the video file. You will have to use textual clues to help Google and YouTube to connect the video with the relative keywords that people are searching. Always ensure that the video file is aptly named. A generic name such as video_001 won’t help YouTube place your video in the right search lists.

4. Specifying Tags

Tags are phrases or words that tell users as well as YouTube what the video is about. When you are creating tags, you need to include the following types: generic tag, specific tag, compound tag, and the refining tag. The refining tag is however optional. You will be able to remove or add tags in the video manager or create them when uploading the YouTube video.

5. Making Use Of The Description

When uploading a video on YouTube, you have the option of including a description. The description is not just a place for your call-to-action. As previously stated, YouTube cannot see what the video is about through images and audio. It extracts the search data from the text and tags connected to the video. This means that the description is a critical component of YouTube SEO.

6. Creating Playlists

YouTube and Google also use playlists to determine the content of your video besides the textual clues. A Playlist is a group of videos that play one after the other. However, a search engine can use the title of the playlist for determining what the videos in the list are about and the videos that relate to one another. Typically, playlists are grouped into categories.

7. Building Back Links Back To The Video

If you have done SEO in the past, you probably understand the role of link building in the ranking of videos. Back links help your videos rank higher since they show the search engines that people trust your content. This concept applies to optimization of your YouTube rankings too. The important thing is to ensure that you never appear spammy otherwise you risk getting penalized by search engines and YouTube can also ban your videos.

Conclusion

YouTube SEO is important if you ever desire to improve the rankings of the video you upload to YouTube. Follow the 7 YouTube SEO tips discussed in this article to ensure that your videos have the best ranking possible in the search engines.